


Standing, Seeking, Not Shouting

by NorthwesternInsanity



Category: Metallica, Music RPF
Genre: Angst, Drifting Apart, Fear of Abandonment, Loneliness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-03 03:07:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17275940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorthwesternInsanity/pseuds/NorthwesternInsanity
Summary: James ponders his internal thoughts of how things have changed between him and Lars from 1986 to 1991, and his fears of what may be to come





	Standing, Seeking, Not Shouting

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a contribution to Ficmas 2018 on Rockfic, as a prompt fill for user heartsighs, who requested a prompt about James Hetfield watching his relationship with Lars Ulrich drifting apart during the era of The Black Album

I told myself it was nothing.

I tried to deny it.

I tried to tell myself that I was just scared of the past repeating.

And maybe I tried to play the 'it's gay of me to think that way' card that everyone in my world would play, no matter what kind of hypocrites it makes of us. At least by playing that card with everyone else, I get to feel normal for one thing, as wrong as it might be.

Whatever. There was only so long I could deny it when it has to do with somebody who's around me in nearly all the waking hours of my life. My friend, my bandmate, somebody who I love and trust...

_Lars._

If losing Cliff was the hardest thing I've had to deal with in the last decade, watching the distance between Lars and I grow from that night onward and knowing just how close we used to be has to be a close second.

Sure, it was expected to a point that we would drift apart. We've made it a lot further since then and have resources we didn't used to. We don't live on top of each other anymore in a tiny apartment, nor do we want to. It would be stupid to do that when there's no reason to. We don't spend our tours attached at the hip in the same way. We have our own hotel rooms, and we don't need to follow each other to every place we go because we've had enough experience to understand what and what not to do on the road. We're comfortable going off by ourselves in most places.

We don't spend twenty-four hour stretches in close quarters -playing, eating, sleeping, laughing, even crying together -on bus rides across states. We charter jets for long-distance and we go in vans for shorter distances between cities. And even if we didn't have the fame and money to fly commercial -let alone a private jet -we would sooner spend five nights straight driving and taking quick naps at rest areas off the highway than spend another night sleeping on a bus.

The fact is, spending less time with Lars was bound to happen with all the changes in our lifestyle. But not necessarily as much less as we have now.

We still see each other in the studio. We still have plenty of time together backstage even if we are in venues with separate dressing rooms. Some of our van rides are close to seven hours long, and we're sitting just a few feet apart through that time. Separate hotel rooms are still almost always on the same floor when we have them, and more often than not, we're right next door or across the hall.

There are plenty of times we could be with each other, and plenty of times we could talk, yet we _don't._ And I know he's made that choice. It doesn't matter that I won't start every conversation, or that I don't always want to start it. Lars has a big mouth and barely knows how to shut it when he should. If he _wanted_ to talk to me and spend time with me, he would.

He would, but he doesn't.

I see him hang out more with Kirk. Him and Kirk. All the time.

And I'm not always welcome with them either. I'm not welcome with my own band.

Sometimes, I think Kirk realizes that they've made me feel unwelcome. He tries to reach out to me. He invites me to hang out with them; he tells me that I can come along wherever the hell it is they're going to.

But that's not the same. It's not the same when Lars isn't the one reaching out to me, and when it's Kirk trying to hold us together rather than the two of us coming together on our own. It doesn't feel natural. It feels like Lars would rather me not be there, and that he'd rather just spend time with Kirk and without me, whether or not Kirk is fine with it.

The hardest part of it is how I can't bring myself to go down on Lars for that. Because Kirk's the only reason I've managed to get to Lars to have more than half the conversations we've had this month. Kirk's a nice guy. He's _too_ nice. Especially compared to me.

Kirk doesn't get angry and snap at people. He'll sooner retreat and pout in the corner when something doesn't work his way than he is to fight over it. He's more likely to fucking cry than he is to jump back at anyone doing him wrong.

I get angry and snap at people. I start fights. I make other people feel like they can't try to stand against me. 

And over time, I feel myself turning more violent in how I do it.

I'm not physically violent yet, but I feel that it's possible to get there, if everything lines up right to push me that far.

_Of course_ Lars would rather be close with a nice guy like Kirk than the monster I'm slowly becoming. Of course he would. Anyone would.

Anyone with sense would leave me behind, like everyone else did. 

It won't be the first time this band has left someone behind, and if they do it to me, I'll know why. I won't be able to blame them, no matter how hard it might be for me.

I know that Lars senses I've changed, and that I've been changing since that cold, cursed night in '86. He's afraid of how I'm still changing. And because of it, he's changing even more too.

Neither of us can hardly recognize each other as who we used to be, so it stands to reason why we don't act the same way with each other either. I tell myself that it's all there is to it, because it's something true, and it all started with something out of our control. Something we can't blame ourselves for, no matter how much we'd like to think we could have changed it.

Maybe that's why Kirk tries so hard to hold us together, because he still blames himself for what happened.

But I know there's more to it than that.

And whether or not either of us are doing what we could be doing or not to make it right -as right as we can make it as it is now -something tells me inside that he really is going to up and leave me. That he'll someday just abandon me, because we've already drifted so far apart, and eventually that'll be the next step further for him.

So I drink. To make that nagging voice that tells me he's going to leave me like everyone else ever did shut up. To not have to think about the possibility that he really might.

The more I drink, the more cold and angry I feel.

The more I drink, the more I want to fight.

The more I drink, the less he's around me.

The less he's around me, the more I end up drinking. And the bigger the possibility that he might leave -or force me to leave -gets as the vicious cycle gets worse.

This vicious cycle is scary. Scarier than anything I've seen -than _all_ the things I've seen. And I know I've seen more than most guys my age.

I don't want to sound as scared as I feel.

I don't want to sound weak. If I sound weak when I already feel weak, then I'll know that I am.

I don't want to reach out and be ignored. I don't want to feel like I'm only shouting in the dark.

I've done enough shouting in the dark in my life already. Plenty of times as a kid. Enough to last a lifetime the night we lost Cliff.

Sometimes I still wish Cliff would come out of the dark and answer me when Lars won't. That he'd comfort me and reassure me that nobody will leave me again like he used to. Before he left us all. I can't be upset with him for that; I know he didn't choose to.

He'd be the only one aside from Lars himself who could make me think for a minute that Lars wouldn't leave me. And I think Cliff was right even though he had to leave. Lars could have already left me by now if he really wanted to. And Kirk's not only staying, but he's the one trying to keep anyone else from leaving.

I know shouting in the dark is useless. It won't stop Lars from leaving if he does, and it won't make him come back to me either. It's stupid, useless, and only makes me look helpless. It's why I won't do it.

So I stand silently here in the dark instead. The darkness that is filling in the design I'm looking at as we mull over album cover designs to choose from.

I follow Lars blindly and silently in the dark, seeking what remaining trust I can find in him, because he's the one who matters so much to me.

Every now and then, I have a victory in my struggle within. Any time that Lars responds to something I said; when he laughs with me, agrees with me, or even argues with me over something small that doesn't really matter to either of us in that Lars Ulrich 'I need to argue with you over this just because I focking can' kind of way.

It's enough for me to hold it together and have the hope to keep seeking the trust we once held between each other. It's enough for me to trust that there's a chance he might just stay.

But come sometime in the next decade, that's not going to work anymore. We'll be so far apart that something in this band is going to break, whether it's whatever's left between Lars and I, or something we can't imagine.

And I don't want to be there when it happens.

If I can call what I've become now a 'monster', there's no telling what kind of monster I'll have turned into by then after lurking in the dark for so long.

But I know it will be the thing to make Lars leave me if he hasn't already by then.

I can't stand in the dark and face that abandonment. Not now, and definitely not in the future. Not with how important he is to me.

The only other choice I'll have when that time comes is if I turn and run from him before he can leave me, and it's the one I'll have to take.

All I hope is that wherever I end up running will give me the chance to come back strong enough to save what we have between us.


End file.
